BY MARISSA MARTINEZ

It is a national debate whether or not phones should be used in the classroom. This epidemic has been ongoing since the introduction of smartphone technology to the classroom. I use my phone countless numbers of times during all my classes, and over half of the time, teachers ask me to put my phone away even though I’m using it to research for school.

Cell phones help out the students in doing last-minute assignments, researching questions or words they don’t understand, and transferring documents from home to school with applications such as Google Docs. Students may feel like their learning experience is more motivated using their phones to help them complete their classwork compared to having to use just their brain.

“I feel like the use of phones in class should be enforced only when the teacher is instructing, but when we are given work to do, we should be able to listen to music and use them as resources,” senior Fernando Mendoza said.

Most students are engaged in learning if it involves something that interests them, such as listening to music. Listening to music helps a lot of people do their work and stay focused. A lot of people get easily distracted by their peers, which means that most of them don’t get their work done. When the teachers allow the students to listen to music during independent work, I personally have witnessed how a lot more people are able to focus and complete their work. Plus, it’s a convenient quiet time for the teachers to do their work as well.

“My phone can be the biggest distraction for me, but also the most helpful and quickest resource I can use to help me with school. Without my music, I probably wouldn’t get 75 percent of my work done,” sophomore Stephanie Flores said.

Many people think phones are a distraction during class time, but more people would say phones are like a useful mobile computer. The use of phones during class isn’t only effective for the students, but for the teachers as well. Teachers have to fight for a spot while reserving the computer lab or the Chromebooks, but when they are lenient enough to let us use our phones during the class period, it’s much more convenient for us and the teachers. We can access almost everything we could on a computer on our mobile devices in half the normal amount of time, so why should students not be able to use cell phones for educational purposes during class?

“I think using our phones in class is a good idea because time is progressing and technology is the future,” senior Sierra Enriquez said.

Using my phone is an everyday thing for me and everyone in this world. I’m always using it for all of my school work, my school emails, and even my calculator for math. I think the use of phones in school shouldn’t be so strictly enforced to not use them, but to encourage us to stay on top of our grades and school work with the use of reminders and the School Loop app.